11 NOVEMBRE -- JOUR DU SOUVENIR

Armistice Day is a national holiday in France and Belgium.  It commemorates the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning—the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month."  Armistice Day (called “onze novembre” by the French) is one the most important military celebrations in France, since it was a major French victory and the French paid a heavy price in blood to achieve it.  The First World War was considered in France as the "Great Patriotic War".  Almost all French villages feature memorials dedicated to those fallen during the conflict.  Just as the red poppy is the symbolic emblem throughout the United Kingdom for those who fell during World War I, in France le bleuet de France is the flower of choice.